Due to advantages such as rapid deployment, convenience for use, and high transmission rate, a wireless local area network (e.g., a Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) network) develops rapidly and is widely applied in various fields. At present, many notebook computers, mobile phones and so on support a WiFi technology, and access points (AP) of a WiFi network are widely available at places such as hotels, coffee shops, and hospitals.
When a connection is set up in the WiFi network, network configuration information, for example, a key, which is needed for setting up the connection with the WiFi network, needs to be configured on a terminal first, so that the terminal can set up the connection with the AP and access the WiFi network. In the prior art, the network configuration information is usually entered manually by a user. For example, in a restaurant such as McDonald's or a coffee shop, the user needs to get a piece of password paper at a service counter and enter a password (namely, network configuration information) on the password paper onto a terminal of the user, so that the user can access the WiFi network in the restaurant; or, when an enterprise holds an internal meeting in a meeting room, in order to prevent another person outside the meeting room from accessing, participants in the meeting room also need to enter a password (namely network configuration information) manually, so that the participants can access the WiFi network in the meeting room after authentication.
To simplify a process of setting up the connection with the WiFi network, the WiFi alliance formulates a wireless network security setup (e.g., a WiFi protected setup (WPS)) method, and the automatic configuration of part of information needed by a network, for example, a service set identifier (SSID) may be implemented through WPS and the security connection of the network is implemented. However, at the beginning of the WPS process, network configuration information also needs to be configured on the terminal, so that the terminal sets up the connection with the AP according to the network configuration information and subsequent transmission of information such as the SSID of the WPS can be executed. In addition, the network configuration information on the terminal is also configured manually by a user, for example, the user needs to search the AP for a personal identification number (PIN) located on the label of the AP, and then enter the PIN onto the terminal manually.
To sum up, currently, when the connection is set up in the WiFi network, the operation of configuring the network configuration information on the terminal is complex and mostly requires manual participation of the user, thereby causing low efficiency in setting up a wireless network connection.